Bandwidth-aware Coverage Path Planning for Swarm of UAVs with Aerial Base Station

Coverage path planning (CPP) by multiple UAVs has been widely studied for its advantage in wide-area searches. For time-critical missions, a swarm of UAVs equipped with a high-resolution camera can be used to transmit live video streams to a ground control station (GCS). However, as the number of UAVs increases, communication between GCS and the UAVs becomes a challenge due to limited channel bandwidth. This paper presents a bandwidth-aware coverage path planning algorithm for UAV swarm that utilizes an aerial base station to efficiently handle the bandwidth limitations while ensuring aerial video quality, as measured by ground sample distance (GSD). By the proposed method, bandwidth-aware mission altitude and width for swarm CPP are found. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is demonstrated through simulations under various scenarios.